Players can compete against each other in many online games in both tournament and non-tournament play. Tournaments often track an aspect of the game and rank the resulting metric achieved by a player as against other players. For example, a tournament of might may measure all the might accumulated by a player against the total might accumulated by other players on that realm.
Once a tournament has begun, it can often be a challenge to get some players to engage as the threshold for placing in the top tiers is so far away. For example, if a player is interested in joining a tournament sometime after it has begun and the tournament leader and others have a high score values which are perhaps unattainable and/or appear to be unattainable, that player may not want to participate in the tournament as they feel that the players already involved in the tournament are so far ahead that they will not be able to catch up. In addition, players already participating in a tournament that fall significantly behind leaders in terms of scoring may lose interest in the tournament and/or quit the tournament. In either of these cases, revenue opportunities as the game progresses may be lessened or lost entirely and, from a player perspective, tournaments can become less interesting to players that feel they don't have a chance to compete for one of the top scoring spots.